UpdateDrone Wars and #OWS
Daily Musings : When Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people I would rather say that religion isn't always the opium of the people. It is when those in authority use religion as a propaganda tool to legitimize their rule that religion becomes the opium of the people.
UPDATE OWS : "People screaming, crying, bleeding" - journalist describes Occupy DC crackdown
America has been in the business of whole sale slaughter of other peoples from 1608-1609 James Town to 1637 War on The Pequot Nation to The Trail of Tears and the Massacre at Wounded Knee to Mi Li to Baghdad to Fallujah to Haditha. The aim is the same to remove anyone in America's way as it pursues its conquests and the expansion of its Empire from New England to California to the Philippines to Cuba to Texas and New Mexico to the Middle East and Africa and so it continues.
(See for instance Francis Jennings The Invasion of America: Indians,Colonialism, And the Cant of Conquest, Pub. 1975
and Bruce Catton and William B. Catton's The Bold And Magnificent Dream: America's Founding Years 1492 -1815 Pub. 1978.
and Charles C. Mann's 1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,Pub. 2006.)
The Real News network video interview of former US soldier Josh Streiber talks about how US soldiers are taught not to be concerned about killing innocent civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan.
They were encouraged that when a road side bomb explodes to spray the area with gun fire to kill any civilians.
They are trained not to think for themselves or to take the Geneva Conventions or other international laws and agreements on conduct of soldiers during a war.
Training makes killing civilians acceptable Pt2
Uploaded by TheRealNews on May 12, 2010
Josh Stieber: They put us through psychological tests to see if we were willing to shoot civilians
Go to www.therealnews.com for series
also see for instance : "Bugsplat" : Obama's Ugly Drone Wars & Fox News Calls #OWS Protesters "Domestic Terrorists" gordspoetryfactory,Nov. 30, 2011
Obama's Drone Wars Going Global Contravening International Law & Common Decency & Expanding the American Empire, gordspoetryfactory, October 19, 2011
#OWS US Hypocrisy on Pro-Democracy Movements & Killing Iraqis Like Flies US War Crimes & Would be US President Mitt Romney Promises Perpetual War gordspoetryfactory.com/ Oct. 13, 2011
USA : From Pepper Spray to Cluster Bombs & #OWS Retake Zuccotti Park; Bill Maher's Support & Occupy's Global Reach gordspoetryfactory,Nov. 16, 2011
US Government Compares AlQaeda Terrorists To Native Americans Who Dared To Resist Genocide gordspoetryfactory, April 12, 2011
USA's Addiction To Violence :"FAIR-Media Advisory Violent Media Rhetoric: Beyond Tucson" gordspoetryfactory.com, Jan. 15, 2011
Not surprisingly Glenn Greenwald and other journalists are being called traitors for posting articles raising concerns that the Obama administration is allowing not just Drone attacks on targeted alleged enemy combatants but also targeting the first res-ponders, rescuers and mourners who show up after the initial drone strike.
Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals by Chris Woods and Christina Lamb, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Feb. 4, 2012
The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.
The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’
Speaking publicly for the first time on the controversial CIA drone strikes, Obama claimed last week they are used strictly to target terrorists, rejecting what he called ‘this perception we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly’.
‘Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties’, he told a questioner at an on-line forum. ‘This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists trying to go in and harm Americans’.
But research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.
Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.
There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days. Because the attacks are carried out by the CIA, no information is given on the numbers killed.
Administration officials insist that these covert attacks are legal. John Brennan, the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, argues that the US has the right to unilaterally strike terrorists anywhere in the world, not just what he called ‘hot battlefields’.
This would seem on the face of it to be a criminal act on the part of the Pentagon and the White House to target civilians for even going to help those initially targeted.
Such acts contravene the Geneva Conventions and those international Agreements on the targeting of civilians and of targeting medical personnel and other first responders.
America's great ally Israel has been conducting attacks on rescuers and other first responders for years but so has the US as it did over and over again in Iraq and elsewhere.
To the Pentagon and the White House even medical personnel helping suspected wounded and bleeding terrorists is in itself giving aid and comfort to America's enemies .
We have also seen these similar attacks on doctors and other medical personnel who have helped wounded protesters in Egypt, Bahrian , Syria, Iran and even in New York and Oakland in the USA.
This is all just part of America's tradition of total war which counts all civilians as legitimate targets that means the elderly, the infirm, children, infants, women and men all are guilty.
We can trace the notion of total war and pre-emptive war going back to colonial period in American history in the European settlers treatment of Native Americans/Amerindians as in the War against the Pequot nation aka King Philips War 1637 which was actually a pre-emptive War conducted by the European Settlers against the Pequot Nation. During the course of the war thousands of Amerindian men , women and children were slaughtered mainly to make way for the settlers so they could then confiscate Pequot lands legally because they had won in a war they claimed was stated by the Native Americans . This would be repeated time and again from the 17th century til the end of the 19th century most notably with The massacre at Wounded Knee in which the Native Americans were erroneously blamed for causing the initial fighting.
And so the so-called Christians that is European Settlers in their typical genocidal racist barbaric fashion in their pre-emptive war slaughtered Pequot Nations people setting whole villages and towns on fire and murdering any who tried to get to safety whether it was a warrior or a pregnant woman or a feeble old man or woman or a toddler or an infant. Native Americans were most often shocked by this lack of regard for women and children and other non-combatants .
America has carried on this tradition not just within the US itself but also in the Philippines
and Hawaii and Cuba in the 19th century and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and of course during the Vietnam War at Mi Li and a hundreds of other villages in order to Pacify and win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. Well as usual these slaughters usually backfire and create even more enemies.
I am not as surprised by these revelations as Greenwald or others might be that civilians would be deliberately targeted in this manner. For instance look at the Baghdad helicopter massacre and one of the troubling aspects of that case was that the Good Samaritans who stopped their vehicle to help a wounded man they were then targeted along with their children. The helicopter pilot's attitude once being told children were in the vehicle his automatic response was " that 's what you get when you take children into a war zone" . That attack took place in Baghdad in daylight when there was no obvious threat to American personnel. And how were these good Samaritans supposed to know that all of Baghdad had suddenly become a No Go Zone and a Free Fire Zone.
In the Haditha massacre American troops after an attack went to a street killing innocent civilians as part of their revenge and retaliation.
The American troops are told from basic training on that all civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan , Yemen , Libya etc. are legitimate targets since all are suspects and this is especially true immediately following an attack on American troops they are told to sweep the area with gun fire in part to possibly get the perpetrators and get their pound of flesh to teach the civilian population a lesson not to f... with American troops.
Once again the response to criticisms of Obama's war on terror policies is as paranoid or just as ridiculous as the Bush administration's and its supporters response to those who criticized Bush's policies as unAmerican, anti-American, treasonus , and as pro-Al Qaeda pro-Taliban etc.
In other words to criticize Obama is to undermine America's Global War on Terrorism".
Once again we see no change from the Bush administration to the Obama administration about the freedom of speech in regards to the White House and the Pentagon's policies.
So to criticize the use of unmanned armed drones attacking civilians as well as enemy combatants is regarded as treason.
Top official: drone critics are Al Qaeda enablers by Glenn Greenwald at salon.com,Feb. 6,2012
The New York Times‘ Scott Shane reported this morning on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism study I wrote about yesterday, detailing that the U.S. drone program, as the NYT put it, “repeatedly targeted rescuers who responded to the scene of a strike, as well as mourners at subsequent funerals.” Shane’s article contains this paragraph:
A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, questioned the report’s findings, saying “targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation.” The official added: “One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”
also see Glenn Greenwald's earlier article on the Drone Wars:
U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, Feb. 5, 2012
On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:
Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.
What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.
In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:
The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.
The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”. . . .
A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.
Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.
There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days.
As I indicated, there have been scattered, mostly buried indications in the American media that drones have been targeting and killing rescuers. As the Bureau put it: “Between May 2009 and June 2011, at least fifteen attacks on rescuers were reported by credible news media, including the New York Times, CNN,Associated Press, ABC News and Al Jazeera.” Killing civilians attending the funerals of drone victims is also well-documented by the Bureau’s new report:
Other tactics are also raising concerns. On June 23 2009 the CIA killed Khwaz Wali Mehsud, a mid-ranking Pakistan Taliban commander. They planned to use his body as bait to hook a larger fish – Baitullah Mehsud, then the notorious leader of the Pakistan Taliban.
“A plan was quickly hatched to strike Baitullah Mehsud when he attended the man’s funeral,” according to Washington Post national security correspondent Joby Warrick, in his recent book The Triple Agent. “True, the commander… happened to be very much alive as the plan took shape. But he would not be for long.”
The CIA duly killed Khwaz Wali Mehsud in a drone strike that killed at least five others. . . .
Up to 5,000 people attended Khwaz Wali Mehsud’s funeral that afternoon, including not only Taliban fighters but many civilians. US drones struck again, killing up to 83 people. As many as 45 were civilians, among them reportedly ten children and four tribal leaders.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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